Associate Professor

Dr. Herman A. van den Berg joined the Faculty of Business Administration as an Assistant Professor at the Orillia Campus of Lakehead University in 2009. His main research interest is in the managerial implications emerging out of distributed ledger (blockchain) technology. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is a graduate with distinction of York University’s M.B.A. program. He also graduated with high distinction from Wilfrid Laurier University’s School of Business and Economics’ Honours B.B.A. program. Prior to joining Lakehead University, he served in successively more senior positions in the electrical utility, financial institution, and environmental services industries. He has also held public office serving as a Trustee on two separate school boards.

In my research I draw upon the intersections between strategic management and finance. My work focuses on issues of valuation, especially of difficult to value intangible knowledge-based assets, with a goal of making explicit that which is often, because of difficulty of measurement, kept implicit.

What connects strategic management and finance for me is the observation that strategic decisions involve estimations of value and value is typically measured in financial terms. The main research question that guides my work is: how do we value that which has no apparent price?

Inspiration

"We are increasingly concerned… with knowledge as a factor of production, having costs and values that we must try to estimate in order to make correct decisions for the conduct of business...

We have discovered that applying an economic calculus to knowledge… is often, because of… intangibility… far more difficult than costing and valuing… production machinery.

Yet, whether we can make the measurements accurately or not, it is precisely these costs and values that determine the efficiency and profitability of our activities…"